The present invention relates to a system for controlling an utilization schedule for facilities. More particularly the present invention relates to a method, system and computer program for setting a time span in which utilization of facilities is forbidden and for controlling utilization of the facilities on the basis of the forbidden time span.
A schedule control system for controlling facilities such as a board room, an automobile and a stadium by using an electronic computer is known. For the schedule control system, there are available a system in which on receipt of a request for facility reservation, if the request for reservation overlaps an already registered schedule the request for reservation is rejected, and a system in which the request for reservation which overlaps the already registered schedule is permitted such as the conventional technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Application No. 5-165835. In addition, there are available a system in which on receipt of a request for reservation, it is decided by an electronic computer without the need for any operation of the manager whether the reservation is registered or rejected, and a system in which a schedule, reservation of which has been requested, is once caused to be in a temporarily registered (pending) state to decide approval or non-approval (rejection) by operation of the system manager.
According to the above-described conventional technology, there has been a possibility that when a request for reservation enters at an unexpected or inconvenient time such as, for example, 0:00 at midnight, the schedule control system registers this schedule. Also, with the system which requires the manager's operation, there is a disadvantage that the manager must set, to "non-approval" one by one, each of the reservation schedules which have been temporarily registered at the time span in which the utilization of the facility is forbidden. Also, for facilities users who do not know the forbidden time span of utilization, there has been the inconvenience that they are notified of "non-approval" after a lapse of time after the reservation schedule is temporarily registered.
Further, with the system in which the reservation request which overlaps the already-reserved schedule is rejected, the system cannot distinguish "non-approval" based on the forbidden time span from "non-approval" due to other reasons. Therefore, there has been the problem that all reservation requests which overlap the "non-approval" reservation schedule are rejected so that the facilities cannot be effectively utilized.